Ah, sing it, Bill Lawry, one more time for the road: “It’s all happening!”

See, back in the day, you’d get a big rugby union “poaching” story once every five years or so. The leaguies would charge down from the hilltops to carry away Russell Fairfax, Michael O’Connor or Brett Papworth, and we’d occasionally strike back by snaffling a Lote Tuqiri. Keep the change.

These days?

These days I’ve had to put another man on just to keep track. No one wants to go to rugby league, and that knock knock knock you can hear in the near distance are either the knees of Peter V’landys contemplating the exodus of his superstars, or the agents of those who remain pounding the doors of Rugby Australia wanting some of the action for their clients, too.

And why wouldn’t they want to head down the same path as Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, to leave what is surely the most brutal football code of the lot, yet played on a mostly domestic stage, to show his wares in Paris, London, Dublin, Rome, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires? Oh, do stop it, you leaguies. Such unseemly squealing. Such undignified knee knocking.

Don’t argue with me. Argue with Angus Crichton, Payne Haas, Reece Walsh, Mark Nawaqanitawase, Nathan Cleary and Zac Lomax, all of whom have already committed to rugby or have been mentioned in dispatches as circling and hoping to come in for a landing.

Angus Crichton in action for the Kangaroos. He could soon be wearing a Wallabies jersey.Credit: AP

What can the NRL do to stop them coming?

I have thought about this, and am sure I have the answer, in four words.

Stone. Cold. Motherless. Nothing.

And least of all not now, with the 2027 home World Cup on the horizon and closing fast. Why wouldn’t a player of Cleary’s calibre want to come over? He can surely accomplish no more in the parish-pump game of league, so why not find out what it would be to unleash some of those precision kicks to outflank the English defence at Twickenham? To deliver an inside flick pass to Haas on the fly, to split the Irish up the middle in Dublin? To lift the William Webb Ellis Trophy in triumph, before doing the victory lap at Stadium Australia in October next year?

Reece Walsh and Nathan Cleary at Wembley Stadium. We would make room for them in the Wallabies.Credit: NRL Photos

Four premierships with Penrith is a big deal, no doubt about it. But now weigh up a fifth premiership, against the value of lifting the World Cup on home soil! Does the former even get close?

Ditto Walsh, who was in the papers on Friday putting in his job application for the union, noting his own sentiments when watching the Wallabies: “Geez, could I give this a crack?”

Yes, Reece, you could give it a crack. Even by Wallabies standards, you are one of the most gifted footballers of any generation, and we of the union like the look of you.

We are expecting your call.

Say what, Tom Brady?

“I don’t have a dog in the fight in this one,” the NFL GOAT quarterback said on the Let’s Go! podcast this week in the lead-up to Monday’s (AEDT) Super Bowl between his old team, the New England Patriots, and the Seattle........

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